How Important is Your Healing?

“Stick and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt me.”

“Stick and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

- Random Nursery School rhymer

Let’s get straight to it; there are a lot of hurt and wounded people all around us. A lot of us, myself included, still harbor unhealthy emotions carried over from adolescence. We still drag around the weight of dead experiences from decades prior, foolishly thinking that these chains are keeping you grounded to the realities of life’s heartaches. We use the dead weight as a shield from connecting emotionally with other people, but the reality is both of these defense mechanisms operate as a weapon against you. The chains that “keep you grounded” restrain you from exploring and searching for the best version of you. The dead weight you use as a shield blocks you from capitalizing on all opportunities to be more than what you are. You can not grow while employing these defense tactics as these were born from trauma that wasn’t dealt with. Trauma is not your friend and if we peel the onion back further, you’ll see that you can not use trauma as a mechanism to heal.

For years I believed that I could use trauma to motivate me to mature emotionally and mentally, but is that really healthy? I doubt it, but this is what society promotes. We share memes like "the best revenge is success" with hundreds or thousands of people liking or sharing, but we don't ask the tough questions that birthed that meme:

(1) Why am I seeking revenge?

(2) Who stabbed me in the back so egregiously that I'm owed compensation or apology?

(3) Who harmed me in such a way that I have to prove my worth to them?

After a full analysis on our trauma is when we realize we have not forgiven or let go of painful experiences from years ago. As time passes, unresolved trauma becomes harder to evict from your soul and becomes a permanent fixture in your psyche, especially if you're still in close proximity to ground zero of when trauma hit. Before you can properly heal, you have to separate from the 3 areas of trauma:

Environment

Trauma is cultivated and allowed to give birth to a multitude of issues including self-hate, low self-esteem, abandonment, molestation, pedophilia, and various forms of abuse. There are no protections against degeneracy, in fact, it is created under the guise of making people tough and strong to deal with the harsh realities of life. This environment has become normalized from adolescence to adulthood primarily because no one stepped in to remove the perpetrator or his/her supporters.

Perpetrator

The main reason why a trauma filled environment is created. This is an individual that has no regard for the damage he will cause. In his mind, his actions are justified due to his history of being violated, offended, and unprotected when he was the target of abuse or perversion. One perpetrator will simply brute force his way to getting compliance from those in his circle while another will use his resources and political affiliations to cover his tracks and escape punishment he justly deserves. He is the bully, the manipulator, the pedophile, the violent drunk...and so is she.

Over the last few years, we've reached the point where we're openly recognizing the women that are the perpetrators, including:

- the teachers that have sex with students and fawn over young, underage males.

- the ones who curse their children out in public, chipping away their self-esteem and value.

- the ones who allow violent and troubled men into their space, giving them access to her children.

Even though they may see it as wrong, these perpetrators have accepted, normalized, and promulgated their abuse because no one came to their rescue. No one protected them from degeneracy, and as the saying goes "hurt people hurt people".

Supporters

Just as worse as the perpetrators, are their supporters. These are the folks who turn a blind eye to the perversion of the perpetrators. They know the full details of what the perpetrators are doing, and yet they do nothing. They don't lift a finger to either stop the abuse or violence, or find a way to get the targeted individual away from the perpetrator or the environment. They simply allow the abuse to continue while collecting all the evidence that they may, or may not, do anything with. In some cases, the supporters were victims themselves. In other cases, they may simply lack the compassion to help another person escape a traumatic experience. Either way, their presence puts you or others in indirect danger.

If you don't separate yourself from these 3 arenas of trauma, you will not heal. You can not tolerate their presence when they're unrepentant for their actions or their involvement in your trauma. Remove them from your personal space. That may be hard to do for minors, but once they reach adulthood they need to take every chance possible to escape. Once you're separated, you can begin to heal.

Healing is work. Do not lie to yourself and say it will be easy. Digging down to the root of your trauma to remove the root is uncomfortable, even scary because you may not have experienced what healthy is. Working through and processing the emotions and pain is tough. No matter what the abuse is, I recommend that you seek a licensed and experienced psychiatrist or therapist to challenge you through tough questions and conversations. Please don't cheat yourself by trying to heal without an accountability partner or aforementioned professionals. You will go nowhere by yourself. Don't rush through it, take your time and leave no shattered fragment of you unturned.

Take a deep breath, visualize what you must do...now exhale. Are you ready to heal?